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101 Wetten, die man garantiert gewinnt
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Hardcover
First published March 25, 2011
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About the author
Richard Wiseman
54 books583 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
Professor Richard Wiseman started his working life as a professional magician, and was one of the youngest members of The Magic Circle. He then obtained a degree in psychology from University College London and a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.
Richard currently holds Britain’s only Professorship in the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, where he has gained an international reputation for research into psychology of luck, self-help, persuasion, and illusion. He has published over 50 papers in leading peer reviewed academic journals (including Nature and Psychological Bulletin), and his work has been cited in over 20 introductory textbooks.
A passionate advocate for science, his best-selling books have been translated into over 30 languages and he has presented keynote addresses at several organisations, including Microsoft, The Royal Society, Caltech, and Google.
Richard is the most followed British psychologist on Twitter, and has created viral videos that have received over 40 million views. Over 2 million people have taken part in his mass participation experiments and he has acted as a creative consultant to Derren Brown, The MythBusters, CBS’s The Mentalist, and Heston Blumenthal, Nick Cave, and the West End play ‘Ghost Stories’.
Richard is a Member of the Inner Magic Circle, an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association, and a Fellow of the Rationalist Association. He is one of the most frequently quoted psychologists in the British media and was recently listed in the Independent On Sunday’s top 100 people who make Britain a better place to live.
He likes sushi, is fond of dogs, and finds Arrested Development very funny.
Professor Richard Wiseman started his working life as a professional magician, and was one of the youngest members of The Magic Circle. He then obtained a degree in psychology from University College London and a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.
Richard currently holds Britain’s only Professorship in the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, where he has gained an international reputation for research into psychology of luck, self-help, persuasion, and illusion. He has published over 50 papers in leading peer reviewed academic journals (including Nature and Psychological Bulletin), and his work has been cited in over 20 introductory textbooks.
A passionate advocate for science, his best-selling books have been translated into over 30 languages and he has presented keynote addresses at several organisations, including Microsoft, The Royal Society, Caltech, and Google.
Richard is the most followed British psychologist on Twitter, and has created viral videos that have received over 40 million views. Over 2 million people have taken part in his mass participation experiments and he has acted as a creative consultant to Derren Brown, The MythBusters, CBS’s The Mentalist, and Heston Blumenthal, Nick Cave, and the West End play ‘Ghost Stories’.
Richard is a Member of the Inner Magic Circle, an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association, and a Fellow of the Rationalist Association. He is one of the most frequently quoted psychologists in the British media and was recently listed in the Independent On Sunday’s top 100 people who make Britain a better place to live.
He likes sushi, is fond of dogs, and finds Arrested Development very funny.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 27, 2016
I'm a sucker for the kind of 'how can you do that?' challenge that featured regularly as ways to win bets on the TV show Hustle - so when I saw Richard Wiseman's new book I was so enthusiastic to lay my hands on it, I bought it with my own money. (Thankfully at an over 50% discount, as the list price is very steep for what it is.) I certainly enjoyed it, but it was also a little bit of a let down.
Psychologist Wiseman has made something of a speciality of 'quirkology' - the psychology of human quirks that lies behind our ability to trick each other, so when the subtitle promised 'the science behind the seemingly impossible' I expected plenty of good pop psychology on why we were taken in by this kind of thing. But in practice the slim book is mostly the tricks with just a few bits of interpolated trivia - the only sizeable bit of fact was about the history of the safety match.
I read the entire book on a 45 minute train journey, though without, of course, trying out the betting tricks. I'm not sure whether I will or not - the trouble is, although the tricksters of Hustle look extremely smooth when they pull this kind of trick in a bar, in reality you are likely to look something of a prat if you try it on your friends down the pub, and most of us wouldn't try it on complete strangers, the only way to successfully make use of it to win money. Sadly, most likely, we will be exposed to children doing these tricks on us and will have to seem pleased and amazed. The only one I might try is the hundred-and-first trick, Wiseman's confessed favourite. Strictly speaking it's a magic trick rather than a psychological one, as it requires a prepared misleading prop - but it is very entertaining.
Of the main meat of the book, there were a lot of old favourites - I recognised about half of them. These included that old chestnut of the repeated word on a line break (spot what's wrong with this
this sentence), the only novelty being the word wasn't 'the', and the 'balance a glass on three knives balanced themselves on three glasses' trick which appeared in the copy of de Bono's Five Day in Thinking that I was given as a present 50 years ago. There were also rather too many problems that required irritatingly unnecessary accuracy of language - for instance, one where the mark is challenged to balance an orange on the top of a glass that is on a table bottom upwards. When they balance the orange, you claim to win as they've put the orange on the bottom of the glass, not the top.
Even so, there were enough novel challenges here that I still think the book is worth buying (and inevitably it would make an excellent stocking filler), especially if you try some of them out. I don't know if it's because I'm an impoverished writer, but I was particularly taken with some of the tricks involving bank notes, and both static electricity and surface tension have roles to play in some of the more imaginative challenges.
Don't expect, then, that these are going to be tricks that blow your mind. They mostly are done with everyday items (though I would probably avoid doing the ones involving lighting matches in a smoke-free pub) - in some the only prop is the human body - but it is entertaining to challenge yourself to work out the solution, where the challenge is not just 'do this' where you can't. And in some cases it's definitely worth having a go, even if it's probably best to do so solo to avoid embarrassment.
Psychologist Wiseman has made something of a speciality of 'quirkology' - the psychology of human quirks that lies behind our ability to trick each other, so when the subtitle promised 'the science behind the seemingly impossible' I expected plenty of good pop psychology on why we were taken in by this kind of thing. But in practice the slim book is mostly the tricks with just a few bits of interpolated trivia - the only sizeable bit of fact was about the history of the safety match.
I read the entire book on a 45 minute train journey, though without, of course, trying out the betting tricks. I'm not sure whether I will or not - the trouble is, although the tricksters of Hustle look extremely smooth when they pull this kind of trick in a bar, in reality you are likely to look something of a prat if you try it on your friends down the pub, and most of us wouldn't try it on complete strangers, the only way to successfully make use of it to win money. Sadly, most likely, we will be exposed to children doing these tricks on us and will have to seem pleased and amazed. The only one I might try is the hundred-and-first trick, Wiseman's confessed favourite. Strictly speaking it's a magic trick rather than a psychological one, as it requires a prepared misleading prop - but it is very entertaining.
Of the main meat of the book, there were a lot of old favourites - I recognised about half of them. These included that old chestnut of the repeated word on a line break (spot what's wrong with this
this sentence), the only novelty being the word wasn't 'the', and the 'balance a glass on three knives balanced themselves on three glasses' trick which appeared in the copy of de Bono's Five Day in Thinking that I was given as a present 50 years ago. There were also rather too many problems that required irritatingly unnecessary accuracy of language - for instance, one where the mark is challenged to balance an orange on the top of a glass that is on a table bottom upwards. When they balance the orange, you claim to win as they've put the orange on the bottom of the glass, not the top.
Even so, there were enough novel challenges here that I still think the book is worth buying (and inevitably it would make an excellent stocking filler), especially if you try some of them out. I don't know if it's because I'm an impoverished writer, but I was particularly taken with some of the tricks involving bank notes, and both static electricity and surface tension have roles to play in some of the more imaginative challenges.
Don't expect, then, that these are going to be tricks that blow your mind. They mostly are done with everyday items (though I would probably avoid doing the ones involving lighting matches in a smoke-free pub) - in some the only prop is the human body - but it is entertaining to challenge yourself to work out the solution, where the challenge is not just 'do this' where you can't. And in some cases it's definitely worth having a go, even if it's probably best to do so solo to avoid embarrassment.
May 15, 2019
Groan after groan after groan. I can't believe I bought this, it reminds me of the junk books you used to get from School Book Clubs.
"Bet you I can hold a lit match under water." "OK"...proceeds to hold lit match under a glass of water..."See, there's water in the glass and the match is underneath"... punch!!
This book should be called "101 Ways to Stop Being Invited To The Pub".
(to be fair, some of the ideas presented were kind of interesting, but so many revolved around 'technicalities' that they would just piss people off rather than amaze them by the 'impossible'.)
"Bet you I can hold a lit match under water." "OK"...proceeds to hold lit match under a glass of water..."See, there's water in the glass and the match is underneath"... punch!!
This book should be called "101 Ways to Stop Being Invited To The Pub".
(to be fair, some of the ideas presented were kind of interesting, but so many revolved around 'technicalities' that they would just piss people off rather than amaze them by the 'impossible'.)
January 5, 2019
Not a terrible book, but anybody who has an interest in the subject will already be familiar with the vast majority, if not all, of the bets. Some of the solutions are poorly drawn/explained, but as you'll probably already know them, it's not an issue. The book works better as a memory jog rather than a source for new material. I also noticed a few of the interesting facts that are scattered around the book are also incorrect. I like Richard Wiseman a lot, but this is a bit of a poor effort.
April 28, 2019
As far as collections of novelties go, this is one of the best compilations since the "Bathroom Readers" of the nineties. Full of impossible-but-true tricks, stunts, bets and tidbits of science and history, it's the perfect space-filler book for when you have time for a few pages but not enough to invest in anything weighty. Plus, I can almost guarantee that one or two of the stunts will make you put down the book and try it yourself to see if it really works. (It does!)
November 14, 2018
Nice little puzzles and tricks to entertain people around.
June 16, 2024
Pretty sure this is just an old book from the '70s, republished with this guy's name on it. Had a book like this as a kid - almost every trick requires either matchsticks or physical money...
July 9, 2012
I nice book with funny and entertaining riddles. Learned something, had a lot of fun.
December 10, 2016
Fun to do with your kids.
August 21, 2017
Nothing bad about few more bucks... The Concept of this game is ambiguous.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews